To choose the local state comp over the high achieving private boys school?

@Seaofcake one of the main drivers for us going private was boarding and the fact DD wanted to do so much of what was on offer. By Y11 she was not only house captain but had 11 other activities as well. She was advised to drop some. That proved difficult but dance and badminton dropped off the list! If DS’s eyes don’t light up, I’m not sure it is worth it, but that’s my measure of what I wanted for DD. She had also attended a taster day and spoken to other girls so she had some idea of what she liked. She could have gone to a local grammar but so many dc were balloted out of trips and sports teams it seemed a bit of a lottery. She had been at a state primary and the private had similar results to the grammar.

There isn’t always pressure in private schools. Many are way more relaxed then the modern state school that picks on dc for not having everything they need and worry dc to death. There are many cases where dc are very anxious because of this. Not all private schools are high performing and most seem to produce a dc with a rounded education.

Many parents avoid their poor local state school. They do see poor behaviour in class and elsewhere as a negative. That’s a prime driver in people moving house!

I've worked in both. Choose private if you can.

Probably the State school based on the info you have given.
I would never send my DC single sex unless I absolutely had no choice. we opted for Private for both our DC but its a very local school and co ed, plus our State Secondary is really bad

@catstaff47 it’s easy to blame peers but ultimately your niece decided not to put the work in, unlike a third of the other pupils at her school, who clearly were not negatively affected by the same peer group.

It is entirely possible she could have gone to the private school and absolutely burnt out and flunked everything under the pressure, or indeed been asked to leave if she wasn’t academically up to scratch. It’s impossible to say.

Not the same every where though. This is the school where my kids would've gone if I hadn't moved out of London

Ridiculous isnt it! My second Dd now 16 socialises in a broad group of teens from around 5 different local schools both state and private though mostly private and the teens are utterly interchangeable!

TheaBrandt · Today 10:56

When I worked in the City years ago the general view was that state educated kids were hoodie wearing knife wielders who had never done a sport in their lives and people would actually say as much assuming they were “amongst friends”.
Shades of that in this thread!

Just as much the opposite as well - private school students live in a bubble, I want my children to have a ‘well rounded’ experience, poshos have eating disorders and do drugs, spoon fed so can’t keep up at university etc etc.

@Neveragain35 i wasn’t asking you. I am not judging but I’ve been around schools long enough to see lots of judgement made by dc and parents! It’s why they want better schools! @MrsBennetsPoorNerves My dd is a barrister and has represented all sorts of people. They can have empathy and it doesn’t have to be found at school. As long as they are decent people, they can mix with a time. I don’t believe school has to be about meeting all sorts like a social experiment.

It’s a reasonable question to ask and plenty of DC swerve others who are not like them. Many dc when looking at uni swerve the ones with more privately educated dc - DN swerved them in a 6th form. So they don’t all mature and don’t all want to mix. Are your dc really friends with dc from drug Addict families then? Or extreme right wing ones you don’t agree with? Not all people or their dc are pleasant.

No way I would send a child to a single sex school. It's messed up.

I have to say that 8/9 are only really relevant in the subjects the child wants to continue to A level. As you need those kind of grades to reach the top grades at A level. The rest of the subjects are simply nice to haves above a pass. Getting all 9s involves knuckling down big time in Year 11. There is so much to remember now especially in Sciences/History and there are past papers to go through to get used to getting the top mark answers correct. A very bright but lazy distracted child is not going to get all 8/9s. However, I don’t think they should need to. A child having a great time with friends but still doing well in there key subjects vs a kid who worked and burned themselves out - I am not so sure which one is preferable.

One of the kids in the wider family got top grades in Maths, Physics and Computer Science and a First in Astrophysics at a top uni, however, he got some 5/6 at GCSE and a 4 in RS. Late summer birthday and simply was not interested in the other subjects especially things like English and the language that was compulsory at their comp.
I think as long as they find their passion and work hard at those and pass the rest it can be absolutely fine in the long run.

LifeD1lemma

All being well, thst could well happen, sure. But I'm currently watching my niece, who also passed exams to a top girls school that gets 95% 7-9 at GCSE. She was also in catchment for an outstanding state that gets 33% 7-9 at GCSE (so excellent for a mixed cohort and well above national average). They chose the outstanding non-selective state option.

She started off very well. Top set for maths. Nothing else was streamed, but every report / parents evening teachers were saying she was 'gifted' at English - consistently top of the school in this and also History. Definitely on a trajectory for all 8s and 9s.

Year 10 came. The classes were mixed up. She fell in with a group of girls who were not academically-inclined at all. My niece completely changed in a matter of weeks. Stopped doing homework. Missing lessons to hang out in the loos making TikToks. She went from being predicted 8/9s to being predicted 4:5s. Her mum didn't know ehst to do. She tried her best with tutors etc, but no avail.

In the end, and to cut a long story short, my niece dropped 3 subjects and only took 6 GCSE's. 5s and 6s in everything. I am certain that if she'd gone to the selective school she would have had a totally different peer group and she would almost certainly have come out with the full set of 8s and 9s she is undoubtedly capable of. It really showed me how, for teens, peer group is everything.

OPs DS may well do brilliantly at the state. But it all depends on who his friends happen to be. This is unpredictable. I've seen very able kids become 'mediocre' way too many times. Because if your friends are all aiming for 3/4s at a push, a teenager will likely will think a 6 or 7 is amazing, even though she/he could be easily getting 9s they could experience others doing the same in their peer group. Kids tend to gravitate to the 'norm' - they measure themselves and are measured against the 'bell curve' in their school environment. This is their benchmark and it takes a strong-minded teen or one with exceptionally-involved parents to push them beyond the relative norm of their school context.

When I worked in the City years ago the general view was that state educated kids were hoodie wearing knife wielders who had never done a sport in their lives and people would actually say as much assuming they were “amongst friends”. I usually kept quiet but was sometimes it was amusing to admit to the true horror of my origins! Shades of that in this thread! Hopefully things have changed!

Absolutely - our state comp is wonderful. My DD's recent GCSE's were stellar. It's a big school so loads of extra curricular options too.

@catstaff47 I don’t disagree with you but as I posted earlier in the thread, since OP’s son got into this super selective school, he is also going to be in the top 20% at the state school, and so will come out with the same results.

Does it matter whether he is 1 of 20% or 1 of 90%? He can only be in a class with a small proportion of the year, so assuming the comp is streamed, the bottom 80% will be irrelevant to him.

Private is most definitely not always best. Some private schools are terrible. They have teachers who wouldn't get jobs in the state sector. Private schools can be money for old rope - often are.

But again, OP is not talking about the independent sector in general. She is talking about a SPECIFIC super-selective that achieves 90% 7-9 at GCSE, versus a non-selective where that figure is 20%.

That is a HUGE difference, whichever way you look at it.

I think some people don't realise how competitive it is to get into that type of school - whether it's a super-selective grammar, independent or academy.

The teachers are no better. There are good and bad teachers in any school. But the pace is totally different. Someone working at a 7 in a super-selective will be seen as 'struggling.' In the lowest Maths sets, they will be getting 8s.

When teachers can just walk into a classroom and everyone is in the top probably 2% of ability, they aren't worrying that anybody isn't keeping up. They finish the GCSE curriculum in Year 9 or 10 and the rest of the time is just consolidating.

There are super-selectives (private and state) in inner London where 15 children sit for every place - eg. There is a school near me where over 1,500 sit exams over maybe 2 days for 100 places at 11 plus. Even after that, there are interviews. It's a stressful process and many are sitting for 5,6,7 schools. Children at the very top of their primaries will often not get in. There are no guarantees for even the brightest child. Numbers-wise, it's more competitive entry than Oxbridge., No wonder, of those who do get in, nearly everyone comes out with 8s and 9s.

This school OP is considering sounds like it's outer London (because she mentions coaches), so maybe it's Hampton, Dulwich College or Merchant Taylor's, something like that? They bus them in from wide catchments. These schools are also very competitive entry. There will be waiting lists of people phoning the schools every day to see if any places have been turned down.

I live in a town with a good state, private & public schools (mine go state) & have friends who send theirs to private / public or have worked in them.

The one thing I’d say is that just because you pay you don’t automatically receive a better standard of learning per se for your child, although the classes are smaller. The teachers aren’t any better. Kids are kids, some will want to learn, some will dick about. What you are paying for are superb sports & music facilities & social access - the old school tie network is alive & kicking - and if that’s important to you then fine.

But my youngest, who somehow has been identified as super-talented at maths has been asked to take part in a national programme so the state system does provide. Equally, a friend took her son out of the local private as she was unhappy, sent him to the local state & they found he had learning issues which had been missed at the private school completely. All I’m saying is that private doesn’t equal best.

Leavealighton sorry to break it to you but you’ve just explained the difference between GCSEs and A levels - that’s not school specific.

Reminds me of our wide eyed first tIme parent neighbours describing the awesome ground breaking things her pfb did at his private school - like a project on Egyptians and a nativity play. What did she think they were doing at the local perfectly decent state primary all our kids had been to ?!

OliveFatball
Not really. She's got lots of friends who stayed on at her old school and knows what and how they are being taught. At private she has double the amount of lessons for each subject with a very small class sizes (maths is biggest with 10 people). She has said it means that they are taking the content a lot slower as they have more time to go into depth.

Is this perhaps more to do with the different demands of A levels and GCSEs?

Hmm, I honestly think at the heart of it they’re trying to impress the same sex more, anything else is a bonus. I suspect the same pressure does exist at single sex schools and I feel that (in particular) groups of teenage girls can be vicious to one another.

By way of (un)balance, most of the private school students I met at university really struggled with the change of pace and independent learning, as they had been considerably more spoon fed than state peers. That is not to say state school kids had been left to their own devices by any means.

I totally disagree with this one. My DC attended state grammar school and has gone to a private sixth form. It has really made her realise that her education to this point has been about memorising information. She has not been taught how to critically analyse or debate a topic. I can't fault her old school - they are working to a results based system. At her new school she is being challenged in a way she never was at state. The small class sizes mean they have the time look at things in a different way and she is really enjoying it.

Your DH can insist all he likes, but all the insisting in the world won't cure travel sickness. Two hours a day on a coach is a big ask, and aside from that, where will all his schoolfriends live? How will he be able to meet up with them after school or at the weekends and in school holidays?

We had a bog-standard average state school less than five minutes' walk from our house, and that benefit far outweighed anything other schools could have offered.

If they were assessed using a CAT/MidYis at the start of year 7 then they could have scored high enough to suggest G&T. A grade 7 at GCSE at a run down comp in a deprived area, where the child hasn’t got anywhere near the level of support, would be equivalent of a grade 8/9. Some universities take this in to consideration, which is why some parents feel hard done by.